Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

A large stone statue of Confucius.

Philosophical Counseling at One Year

August 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

As many readers know, I finished my APPA Certification in philosophical counseling a year ago. In fact, it was closer to two years ago. Since then, I’ve been a practicing philosophical counselor. I even have a page on this website for philosophical counseling services.

What have I learned? Has philosophy shown its power to help people with everyday problems? Have I gain any insights from my work? Or has the appeal to philosophy to solve practical matters flopped?

First of all, people haven’t exactly been knocking down my door seeking philosophical counseling services. But that’s normal and expected. Philosophical counseling is relatively new, and insurance plans don’t cover it. Furthermore, it’s not my first job. I haven’t exactly been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars advertising myself.

But I’ve had clients. And in this post, I’ll draw on my experiences working with two particular clients. We can draw some lessons from those cases. Of course, I’ll use artificial names in order to keep them anonymous.

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A photo of Iowa Democrat Jon Green sitting in a bar wearing a cowboy hat and a beard.

The Jon Green Test for JC Dems

August 3, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Jon Green easily won his June primary election. But JC Dems have mixed feelings about it.

Facing multiple challengers, he pulled out 49% of the popular vote, finishing nearly 20% higher than the second place candidate. And he won 13 of 14 precincts, losing the 14th by only three votes. This looks curiously similar to Green’s last election in 2022. In that one, he faced a spirited primary challenge from a Democratic Party insider.

But there’s something curious about Green’s appeal to the electorate. Consistently, he’s more popular with independents and in the general election than with the loudest and most active members of his own party.

That’s worth thinking about.

A few weeks before the primary, I made the following post on Facebook: Democrats should carefully reflect on why they don’t like Jon Green. I suspect the answer to that question says a lot about why most Iowans dislike their party and why their party, as presently constituted, has no long-term electoral viability in Iowa.

In re-posting here, I wanted to raise the challenge for a broader audience. JC Dems should think about why they don’t like Jon Green. And they should think about what this says about their prospects of building a party that can compete in electoral cycles that aren’t nationwide blue waves (i.e., most of them).

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A photo of the Pedestrian Mall (Ped Mall) in Iowa City, Iowa, showing a large pedestrian space with many people walking around on a sunny day with bright green tree leaves.

Iowa City’s Agora

July 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The Ped Mall is Iowa City’s agora. So I asserted in a post from years ago. And so I’ll assert again today.

The thought came to mind a couple of months ago as I sat on a park bench in spring, one of my first trips to a Ped Mall park bench after the long winter. And it came to mind again – for much worse reasons – as I watched the news coverage in the aftermath of the Ped Mall shooting.

Public coverage of the Ped Mall shooting focused on its impact to students. I mean, a worse shooting in 2017 drew little public interest…because it didn’t involve students.

But the news hit me so hard because the Ped Mall is where everyone comes together. It’s not just a hangout for students on Friday and Saturday night. It’s also a place where a cross-section of our residents come together. We see office workers, homeless people, students, the under-employed, parents with their kids, grandparents with their grandchildren, and so on. All of us.

I don’t spend as much time on the Ped Mall these days as I did while I was a grad student. But it’s still a regular stopping point for me. And I certainly didn’t want to see it muddled up by gun violence.

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A photo of an interestingly shaped set of boxy apartments in a new housing development.

A Tale of Two Housing Developments

July 13, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Housing is always a hot topic in Iowa City. And it’s one I write about from time to time. Most recently, I wrote a couple of posts about how both YIMBY and NIMBY positions get it wrong.

I’ll continue that theme in this post.

Obviously housing is one of our most basic needs. It stands alongside food and water as one of the essentials. But it’s also an issue that brings to bear many of the central problems with life in an advanced capitalist country full of inequalities of wealth and power. It also shows our political shortcomings.

Nowhere do we see all this more clearly than in two recent housing developments in Iowa City.

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